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First off, thanks to all had answered my questions over the last few weeks, invaluable! Headed off Saturday 2nd June from Alvechurch towards Birmingham at 4pm and moored overnight at Hopwood and had a nice meal at the Hopwood House pub. Sunday 3rd..rain, rain, rain and more rain....we went through Birmingham (Gas Street Basin deserted!), went down new Main Line and didn't see another boat at all...went through Netherton tunnel and were glad for the shelter from the rain...still no other boats and we kept going until we got to Merry Hill and moored past Green's Bridge with some other boats belonging to boat owners. It was so windy here our boat got blown across and pinned to the fence on the wrong side of the canal and some friendly chap jumped off his own boat and came to our rescue to help us moor. Ate in the Brewer's Wharf at Merry Hill and it was another standard Marston Pub and does what it says on the tin. I have never been so soaked and we were all literally soaked through to the skin through 4 layers of waterproofs and clothing! Monday (the only sunny day!) - headed on down to Kinver and got the last mooring past Kinver lock. Pub there closed so walked into Kinver and ate at the White Hart. Another Marston pub so standard ok hot food on a plate! Tuesday - Overcast but dry...headed down to Stourport...moored outside canalside pub after bridge 8 (I think) but kitchen closed due to Jubilee BH. Ate in The Rising Sun (by bridge 5) - perfectly ok pub, very friendly people inside. Weds - Down the Severn in the pouring rain again (saw only 1 boat going up or down the Severn!), up onto the Birmingham and Worcester and kept going all the way to Tibberton and had a cracking meal in the pub right by the canal (Bridge Inn I think?). Also the owner treated me to some of his homebrew cider from the kitchen and I slept well that night!! This was by far the best meal we had all week. Thursday, wet and windy - Moored up right at the bottom of Tardebigge. Had a simply horrible meal at the canalside pub called The Queen's Head. My wife had to send her salmon back since it was uncooked in the middle and my daughter's kid's meal of a toad in the hole was burnt to a cinder! My lamb was fairly inedible... Fri - Cold and windy in morning and began Tardebigge climb at 8.15am. We were lucky since nearly all locks in our favour plus hardly any traffic coming down so we got through top lock by 11.45!! 3.5 hours I was very pleased with especially since it was pouring down again by about lock 46!! Pushed on and got back to Alvechurch around 1.30pm...soaked, left boat off and came home a day early! Overall impressions? My wife and I enjoyed it (mostly). There's only so many soakings you can take and we had the heating going on the boat pretty much all week to dry clothes and keep warm. The in-laws hated it due to the weather and harder work than they thought! But overall my wife and I came away with a real sense of achivement in beating weather and locks! Met some fantastically friendly people, ate good food apart from that 1 pub, our 8 year old loved feeding and watching the swans and ducks all the way round. Would we do it again?......Yes but definitely not with the In-Laws so I'm happy there since it's also made my wife realise we wouldn't go anywhere with her parents ever again!!! Next time we'll check the weather, book last minute and choose our fellow passengers more wisely!! Tired but happy...hate UK weather though!

NBW have to do this the week before, then if there's any change of policy they can claim it was their campaign that did it...

Can I use legionnaires as an excuse to get rid of the shower head and hose that's always left pointing in the wrong direction and get a proper, manly, fixed shower rose on a chrome pipe? For the icing on the cake, can we find an infection risk in dozens of bottles of girly potions left around the shower tray and limit it to one small bottle of shampoo and a bar of carbolic soap? MP, dreaming.

News Night looking at my guide Tue 12 ? Edit to say its BBC1

It's one of Munch's lesser known works.

It is rumoured that the ghost of 12V electricity, aka Gibbo, only appears when a particularly complex 12V problem is presented that has everybody flumoxed and for which all the necessary evidence for its diagnosis has been published. It then appears in a single spontaneous flash, as if by magic, and then returns to the bottom of the lead-acid cell from which it came, never to re-appear in the lifetime of this problem. Or so the story goes as told at my mother's knee... This ghost is mostly positive but can occasionally be negative, and rarely neutral.

Someone give mjg some talc, he's squeaking again ;-)

Why does every ex working boat have to have its top taken off and restored to working condition? Part of their history is that many were converted for 'cruising' use because there was no work for them. Had this not been done, many of them would have just been cut up for scrap. A converted ex working boat has just as much validity as non/de-converted one.